Title

Authors

Sponsor

Work supported by the U. S. Army Research Office (Durham) and by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and monitored by the U. S. Army Research Office-Durham under Grant number DA-AROD-31-124-71-G52.

Published In

Journal of Chemical Physics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-1-1973

Subjects

Hot carriers, Transport theory, Nonlinear theories

Abstract

Hot electrons have been injected into very dense argon, nitrogen, and hydrogen gases and liquids. The current‐voltage characteristics are experimentally determined for densities (N) of argon, nitrogen, and hydrogen ranging from about 10²⁰ to 10²² cm⁻³ and applied fields (E) ranging from about 10 to 10⁴ V cm⁻¹. The argon data show a square root E∕N dependence of the current. The nitrogen and hydrogen data show a complicated dependence of the current on E∕N due to the rapid thermalization in the region of the image potential of the injected electrons through inelastic collision processes not present in argon. A hydrodynamic‐two‐fluid model is developed to analyze the nitrogen and hydrogen data. From the analysis of our data, we obtain the density dependence of the momentum exchange scattering cross section and the energy relaxation time for the injected hot electrons.

Description

This is the publisher's final pdf. Article appears in Journal of Chemical Physics (http://jcp.aip.org/) and is copyrighted 1973 by the American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics.